THE Pakistan Cricket Board have taken the initiative in the quest to ascertain the guilt or otherwise of the players named in allegations of ‘spot-fixing’.

Test captain Salman Butt and seamers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer will all be questioned in London today by PCB chairman Ijaz Butt and his country’s high commissioner.

The PCB’s decision to announce a unilateral, “internal” investigation follows three days of high-level crisis-management talks between them, the International Cricket Council and the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Time is short, following the weekend’s newspaper allegations that seamers Aamer and Asif bowled no-balls to order during the Lord’s Test – with the knowledge of Butt, and the intention of helping to defraud illegal bookmakers.

Croydon-based businessman Mazhar Majeed was subsequently arrested in connection with the matter but released without charge after 24 hours of interviews at Scotland Yard.

All three players are in the Pakistan Twenty20 and one-day international squad, due to face England from Sunday onwards and to play in a warm-up match against Somerset in Taunton on Thursday.

But having travelled with their team-mates from London to Taunton yesterday, they stayed behind at the tourists’ hotel on the outskirts of town while their colleagues practised at the County Ground this afternoon.

Multiple inquiries are therefore ongoing, as Scotland Yard and the ICC continue their own investigations.

Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the country’s highest law enforcement agency, has also sent three investigators to the UK.

Reports have suggested other matches may have been fixed and up to 80 international Tests could form part of the police investigation. The claims are the latest in a string of match-fixing allegations to dog the Pakistan team since the 1990s.